Tuesday, September 6, 2011

DISPELLING REPRESENTATION The moving image fascinates because of its relationship between fact and fiction. Since its inception in 1895 by the Lumière brothers, who invented the first portable motion picture camera, audiences have been spellbound by the sheer photographic beauty and timelessness of cinematic representation. In an approach to dispel the myth of filmmaking a number of artists have created outstanding works that examine the structural properties of film and video and disclose its problematic relationship to reality. Thought evoking examples are the video works by Pierre Huyghe and Dominique Gonzalez-Foester. They examine the tension between reality and cinematic time and place.French artist Pierre Huyghe frequently mixes fact and fiction by reconstructing scenes and juxtaposing timelines. In the video work L’Ellipse from 1998 Huyghe uses scenes from Wim Wenders film The American Friend (1977) and creates a narrative in three videos projected in juxtaposition. The opening and ending scenes are taken from Wender’s original movie. For the narrative blank between these two scenes Huyghe jump cuts to a sequence he filmed with the original lead actor Bruno Ganz twenty years later. The opening scene shows the protagonist receiving a phone call and then leaving his apartment. Thereafter we are following the ‘American friend’ walking the streets until he arrives and enters a building. With much surprise one notices that the actor appears older and the city environment looks much more contemporary than the previous apartment interior. In the closing scene we see the protagonist returning to the same apartment from the beginning sequence shifting the whole narrative twenty years past again.The insertion of the reenacted missing sequence draws attention to the fractured temporal structure of cinematic vision. The middle sequence demystifies cinematic illusion by revealing aspects bound to reality such as an aging actor, changes in the location and color and quality of film material. Huyghe’s exploration of different planes of reality and time discloses cinema’s productive mechanisms. He parallels fact and fiction in order to examine the magical field of illusion produced by the film camera. A more subtle blending of fact and fiction can be found in Dominique Gonzalez-Foesters works. Her videos construct narratives of places and natural human interaction that unfold as psycho-geographic portraits of cities and spaces. Riyo from 1999 was filmed along the north bank of Kyoto’s Kamo River at nightfall in one linear tracking shot. The sound is a phone conversation between a Japanese couple who once met at the Kamo River bank. The conversation is also superimposed as English text over the film images. Gonzalez-Foester layers the stream of images along the Kamo River with the flow of a private conversation in word and text. Gradually, the actual location dissolves into fleeting events and memories on our passage along the river into the night. Cinematic illusion is offered in Gonzale-Foesters films as an assembly of images and experiences. Actual places become a vehicle to a world within us. As much as we watch her videos in a contained gallery room or home cinema the work itself underlies the idea of containment that means placing the viewer inside the film. Cinematic representation separates fact from temporal and local fixtures. As soon as we are entering a projection room or movie theatre we are contained both within the room and within the image that invades the same space. While the moving camera allows us to take a journey to ‘nowhere at any time’ its spell still leaves us lingering in the present.

A boat trip on Lake Jökulsárlon (English: glacier lagoon) in Iceland. A giant glacier outpours into the cold water. Icebergs break from it and come dangerously close to the boat. On the open edges of the shattered ice sheet age-old layersa are visible, usually white as fresh snow, but intermitted by very thin films of pitch-black volcanic ash. Under the night sun it all shimmers in cool blue.The geological stratification of the millennia is reflected in the video. Geometrically layered divisions of the image represent the continuous accumulation of snow and ashes through the milleniums and slowly but steadily assemble to a coherent whole.

2. Roongroth Kaltapongwanit (Thai) "บุญสีขาว" Pal, Color, Sound, 2011

The boy became a tool for adult who using them inside our society gab.

Geometric patterns drawn on the surface of a white cube revolve in a circle. The cube also itself rotates and then multiplies, so that the patterns' appearance transform based on the how each cube aligns with its neighbors. Experimental animation made with paper models.8. Ponlawat Poungsiri (Thai) "Hellcat Spangled " Pal, Color, Sound, 1.30 min, 2011.

It is about modern society and the TV show that brings about ghost stories to the public. Stupid audiences are watching and asking nothing about it.

Several passengers’ feet are dangling from gondolas of the fairground ride ›Stargate‹. They’re excited about an unusual roller coaster ride that will break down the bounds of the ego. The image increasingly fans out like a kaleidoscope. Like a cinematic mirror of the passengers’ feelings, the work always moves on the edge between the concrete and the abstract, only to finally disintegrate and vanish into nothingness.

Hairy Monsters - A witty homage to the porn films of the 60s and 70s, taking place in the worlds where hair removal is not an issue. The magnified, gently swaying landscapes of pubic hair are transformed by a kaleidoscopic lens into bizarre, threatening creatures.

In every roads we encountered, the colors of all cars have been passed by. In all speeds of the car had made track, each of their color is explosion to our eyes. But the beautiful or dangerously that we face on them.

Auspices 2010 shows birds flying in their formations in the sky. The dynamic, spatial movements of the animals is picked up again by the soundtrack(in collaboration with the musician and painter Bartosz Skorski).15.Nithiphat Hoisangthong (Thai) "World map (Kaleidoscope)" VDO (Motion graphic) Color, 09.26 minute, 2011.

In the world of reality. Uncertainty that appears in the system. The problem of the limit. And conditions. Surrounded by a variety of factors and variables that are unfamiliar. Thus, during the journey of life that we must confront. Is to learn to deal with loneliness among themselves.

Untitled (The Only Possible Answer) consists of fragmented texts, audio and performance combined into a ten minute long narrative in the form of a video projection. There appears to be a description of an art world outsider experiencing, for the first time, a work of art that converts her to belief in art’s potential as a transformative power. A curator like figure recalls discovering an artist whose work is ‘unlike anything I had ever encountered, in all my years of looking at art’. A voice over describes a quasi religious/ ecstatic experience whilst attempting to understand a small sculpture, and finally, several texts hint at a revolutionary artist who is compelled to convert others to a deep understanding and belief in art. The initially seemingly unrelated parts may or may not be linked together, and may or may not be taken seriously, depending on the viewer’s perspective. The work is partly based on the writing of American author David Foster Wallace and references one of his characters, Brint Moltke, a naive artist figure.

What all experience the same is living in a period of time. Time represents an intangible thing as a space. Various events happen in order, but this does not mean that those times and events are combined together. While some people always encounter life alteration similar to the swing condition of an object, their perception of joy or sorrow or neutral takes place at any one moment and any one dimension in space. One circumstance at one time affects the other one at another dimension, and turn back to the same time. We all have a global time outside in concert. We all have time measurable and not measurable that refers to internal time. The internal time constantly walks at a reverse rate from external time. Some situation aiming to travel of internal time in a short movement takes much external time while many understanding with a long time of learning process takes a short period of time at the appropriate timing step. The balance of the perception of internal and external time is complex to discover consistent and stable time when such insights frequently do not go along with practical steps.

18. Nicole Shatt (Swiss) "Bercy" Pal, Color, Sound, 4 min, 2011.

A cloudy sky and the noise of a large city in the background. At regular intervals you can hear a rumble of a approaching skatebord and then, for a short moment, a skatboarder is flying through the sky.19. Piriya Ouypaibulswat (Thai) "Freeze" Pal, Color, Sound, 3 min, 2011.

A new culture of consumerism is controlled us as overshadow in everyday live, all the things we are connected to them more than Thai culture as individuality ways.

When one considers one's life, the preeminent question shouldn't be "How long will I live?" but rather the eternal questions, "Why was I born?", "What is my purpose in life?" and when the inevitable happens, "Where do I go after I die?" Humanity follows a cycle of living and dying. The world's religions have all tried to answer these questions for their adherents and only the faithful feel secure in the answers given. For all others, acceptance of the nature of life---that it is fleeting and followed by death and re-birth---is the best compromise towards answering these eternal questions.

the work is trying to put an image into reality. the well known image of the donkey following the carrot is a metaphor for trying to reach soemthing which is not reachable. in my video i wanted to fix a woodstick with a string and a carrot attached on the back of a donkey. just to see if it is true that the donkey will follow the carrot. i did not succed because the stick did not hold on her back - it was a female donkey -, she was not happy with that thing on her back. finally i jumped on the donkey and made a ride, holding the stick and feeling likedon chichotte and sancho panza in one. strange, stupid and funny.

On violence, aggression, eroticism which is hidden in the media. Was obviously revealed. Amid the joy the fun of the audience.

28. Hund & Horn (Austrians) "Apnea" Pal-HD, Color, Sound, 2011.

A family of three is being severely put to the test by their strange living conditions. The laws of physics are changed in Hund & Horn's new film Apnea which completes their gravity trilogy (which consist of Tomatoheads, Dropping Furniture and Apnea).29. Jidapa Tengchaisri (Thai) "Reverse Thai" Pal, Color, Sound, 1.44 min (loop), 2011.

Tesafilm is an awareness raising excercise. Therefor I have been pasting over my face into a state of unrecognisable condition. My wrapped in wrinkly skin reminds to packed meet from the supermarket. Durng the performance i peel of the stripes from a state of emergency of my own making back to reality.

The tearful of women is a kind of waste, thus for dirty expression of them self.32. Siegfried A. Fruhauf(Austrian) "Ground Control" Animation, Pal, Color, Sound, 2008.

Ground Control is a rough video miniature. It begins with the simplest and most fundamental thing the electronic moving-image machine has to offer: the uncontrolled beam of electrons directed across a photoelectric layer of cesium oxide lining a Braun tube, or snow. Recording this chaos involves a fascination that existed during the early days of film: the repeatability of a unique event. A visual sequence which has never before existed and will never happen again becomes reproducible, thereby losing the status of the chaotic. This idea, a result of the desire to control an uncontrollable world, is the beginning of the chain of associations in this video, which randomly acting ants push their way into. The image of them crawling is manipulated in the reproduced images, distortion of their movement is forced upon them. The insects become monsters when, after being locked into the frame, they suddenly burst into the (snow)storm as a sequence of individuals. This echoes the atmosphere of terror in the so-called bug movies of the fifties (“Them!,” “Tarantula,” etc.): Nature goes wild as a result of scientific experiments, taking its revenge on humankind in the form of giant insects. The snow is carried over to a satellite antenna, a fuzzy outline of which appears in the picture: They are, so to speak, brought back to earth (and reality?) there, those invisible waves that transport the images, the invisible force that controls them and the power they generate. In a technological sense waves now serve as a vehicle for moving images. As the movement of the surface of water, the represent a constantly changing visual spectacle, and through them the video descends into the images’ snow in the end, thereby returning to its beginning.Siegfried A. Fruhauf (Translation: Steve Wilder).

Travel memories are subjective, often romantic, and incomplete. Focusing solely on atmosphere, the travel diary Chiles en Nogada presents itself in abstract flickers. Every once in a while there is a flash of a concrete and almost cliché image of a classic tourist destination … The hypnotic static images domineer the screen with the filigree, sawing noise landscapes by Angélica Castelló, dieb13 and Burkhard Stangl. Once upon a time in Mexico. (Diagonale 2011)

Abstract experimental film, art on 35 mm film with synthesizer-sound.Original material are foto-works. The sound is made by a VAZ modular synthesizer. Picture and sound act as equal elements in my films.36. Parnrawee Kongtim (Thai) "Worry" Pal, B&W, No Sound, 4 min, 2011.

I have been worried and not satisfied with the amount of unwanted hair that grows around my face, arms, legs and beard. The excessive hair gives an unnatural look of me as a woman. So, I want to express the feeling of worry through the work of art.

I recorded the changing pattern of air and wave in a certain period of time. In fact, its changing is one of the circles of life in nature. I sometimes ignore it since I was occupied with my personal matter and forget to look around.

This work is a record of the endurance of my body when subjected to suffering. There is temporal cause and effect relation, which stimulates persuasive quality in the work. Relations between interior and exterior bridge external social, political and medical pressures. Emotional states like psycho discomfort and disturbances manifest through body. I have been looking in to connections between culture, emotion, politics and physics, trying to find symbolism of logic. Perforation intensifies strangeness and disjunction. The work can be observed as reflective/ meditative body ritual playing with state of living in continuous anxiety and fear.

44. Surat Sadsang(Thai) "moving sound" Pal, Color, Sound, 2011.

We are living anywhere which is surrounding by many sounds that I would represent them as my art work through my visualize and rhythm from it.

Hidden camera, in Paris around the louvre people practice a scam, which is base on the "finding" of a golden ring. They ask you if it was yours, or just offer it to you out of an impulse of generosity. They wish you good luck and let you go but after a few meters approach you again to ask you for some money. For the video "lucky day" I filmed the trick out of the perspective of victim but I just used the parts of the finding and presenting of the right without the begging part.

The video starts with a move through a night-underwaterworld, corals, strange fishes, sand. A hostile, impossible place for human beings, then there is a light, a structure appears, the last outpost of human civilisation is a restaurant. The camera views through the window in the inside before turning back into darkness.

This video documents what happens when an art installation changes University students' daily environment by only an slightly perceptible degree. A cellophane membrane enclosing a stairwell offers moments of "the new" being suddenly brought to a student's consciousness, while at the same time is easily ignored by the unobservant.

What you see is what you think? Was that truth?53. Gertrdue Moser-Wagner (Austrian) "Solidaritaet", Pal, Color, Sound 6.50 min, 2011.

54. Chayanis Wongthongde (Thai) "Mystery" Pal, Color, Sound, 2011.

The existence is a question around us.55.Norbert Pfaffenbichler(Austrian) "CONFERENCE" Notes on Film 05, Pal, B&W, 08 min, AT, 2011.

In this Found-Footage-Film Close-Ups of actors playing Adolf Hitler in movies created between 1940 and today are combined in shot/countershot-manner. No other historical figure of the 20th century was portrayed more often in movies and by so many different actors than Adolf Hitler. (Only Jesus Christ has more appearances in cinema’s history - but with a headstart of more than 50 years.) In this grotesque and uncanny identity parade Adolf Hitler is presented as an undead who is impersonated by a alarming number of revenants.

CONFERENCE is part five of my "notes on film"-series, which deals with film the oretical and -historical subjects. The movie is also part of a series of works about Charles Chaplin, which includes a number of installations and films.